Labor Department Brings Data Releases to Twitter

The Labor Department is getting into the Internet’s frenzied information race, releasing details from the monthly U.S. jobs report on its Twitter feed.

AFP/Getty Images

The move to distribute financially sensitive information via Twitter shows how social media is rebuilding the way the government, companies and news organizations interact with Wall Street. On Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said companies can post information for investors on Facebook, Twitter and other sites, as long as the companies have told investors where to look.

The Labor Department has been releasing the jobs figures on its Twitter feed for several months, but only three months ago began routinely publishing details on Twitter promptly at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, the same time news organizations release stories on the data. Its tweet on the March payroll figures drew attention to the recent practice.

“March payroll employment edges up (+88,000); unemployment rate changes little (7.6%),” read Friday’s tweet by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor, which also posts data releases on its website around 8:30, released the information through Twitter under the same time restrictions it places on news organizations that see the report early under special embargo procedures.

Labor’s monthly snapshot of the labor market is hotly anticipated by traders from New York to Hong Kong for a broad read on the direction of the world’s largest economy. It often has the power to jolt markets.

The data were tweeted by Labor at about the same time or slightly before the news was distributed by major news organizations including Dow Jones & Co., Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg LP. Dow Jones, a unit of News Corp., is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and other publications.

The move to release the data on Twitter could give some traders a jump on the news. “It serves as an absolute threat to news agencies in terms of getting information out, particularly on releases like that,” said Christopher Nagy, president of KOR Trading LLC, a consulting firm.

By using Twitter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is now posting the news virtually at the same time as news services.

“It’s just another way of providing information to our customers” the general public, said Gary Steinberg, a Bureau of Labor Statistics spokesman. “It’s meant to just be an easy way for anyone to subscribe and just keep seeing data as we release it.”

Dow Jones declined to comment. Reuters didn’t immediately comment.

A Bloomberg spokesman pointed out that the company recently started including Twitter feeds in its products. ”Our customers value the depth of our independent analysis and we always work
to get them the most essential information at the most critical times,” a spokesman, Ty Trippet, said in an email.

About Real Time Economics

Real Time Economics offers exclusive news, analysis and commentary on the U.S. and global economy, central bank policy and economics. Send news items, comments and questions to the editors and reporters below or email realtimeeconomics@wsj.com.